Mark L. Hopkins: Presents or presence?

Mark L. Hopkins More Content Now

Monday

Dec 11, 2017 at 10:40 AMDec 11, 2017 at 10:40 AM

We have just passed through another “black” Friday. It is that one day after Thanksgiving when the stores at the malls open at 6 a.m. and stay open until midnight. It’s black Friday because retail merchants expect their labors over the past year to finally get out of the “red” and into the black,” when the monthly ledger will finally show a positive balance. On that day each year I stay out of the stores and I hesitate to even drive by the mall on the way to anywhere.

Perhaps it was the Three Wise Men who started all the trouble. They brought presents with them when they followed the star to Bethlehem to see the baby Jesus. Ever since, we have been giving presents to each other to celebrate Christmas. To be fair, people in many cultures and religions find excuses to give gifts, much to the joy of the recipients and the store owners.

In the Christmas story, the Three Wise Men brought gold, frankincense and myrrh. Gold is still very acceptable, frankincense and myrrh less so. (For one thing, those items are hard to find at Walmart.) If the three kings of the Orient had been as wise as advertised they might have brought a broom to the stable. (By the time they arrived to Bethlehem the scriptures tell us the little family had moved into a house.)

One of the realities of growing older is that there comes a time when you don’t feel the need for more presents. When you were young, Santa could gift wrap a brick and make you happy. All of us with children can remember when, by the afternoon of Christmas Day, children were playing more with boxes the toys came in than with the toys.

Sadly, the excitement of a Christmas present slowly wanes as the years go by. Sure, it is always nice to receive a sweater, a tie or socks. These are useful gifts and reassuring tokens that somebody cares. But, year after year, something that might be called sweater fatigue sets in. It is probably a sign of being spoiled but, after a while, it’s hard to clap hands and say, “Oh my, a sweater!”

Every family has a Scrooge who never got a present he didn’t already have two of and, if he didn’t, this one was certainly the wrong color. Sweater fatigue. Socks fatigue. Underwear fatigue. You can make up your own name for it. By a certain age, it isn’t presents you need from those who love you. What you need is presence, the presence of those we love and of those who love us.

Perhaps the Wise Men knew this. It wasn’t the gold, frankincense and myrrh that were important. It was simply their presence for the adoration of the Christ child. After all they had traveled halfway across the Middle East to “see this thing that had come to pass.” That isn’t exactly “over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house,” but whatever distance it was, it made such an impact that we are still reading about it 2,000 years later.

The commercialism of Christmas is something that is lamented from church pulpits on Christmas Sunday. Commercialism is our blessing and our curse. Too often, the promise of peace on Earth and goodwill among men seems to have been postponed until further notice. But we can do something about that by following the highest star of the human heart.

What I want for Christmas is for the lonely to be visited, neglected parents to be loved, and distant relatives to be called or, better yet, invited. Personally, all I want for Christmas is to be with my family, all of my family, every one of them. Presents are fine, presence is better.

Ruth and I wish you all a wonderful Christmas with lots of presence and, yes, some presents too.

— Dr. Mark L. Hopkins writes for More Content Now and the Anderson Independent-Mail in South Carolina. He is past president of colleges and universities in four states. Books by Hopkins currently available on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble include “Journey to Gettysburg” and “The Wounds of War,” both Civil War-era novels, and “The World As It Was When Jesus Came.” Contact him at presnet@presnet.net.